Ethics in Management Research

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Ethics in Management Research
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Introduction

• What are ethics?
• What are ethical principles
• Ethical business behaviour
• Brief history of evolution of ethics in research
• Ethical principles

• Ethics in research
• Qualitative vs quantitative data

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What are ethics?

• Societal norms adopted by a group
• A conception of conduct that is right or wrong
• Deal with fundamental human relationships
• Are a universal human trait

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Ethical Principles What are they?

• Guides to moral behaviour
• Good honesty, keeping promises, helping others,
  respective rights of others
• Bad lying, stealing, deceiving, harming others
• Universality of ethical principles should apply
  in the same manner in all countries, cultures,
  communities
• Relativity of ethical principles vary from
  country to country, community to community

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Ethical Relativism

• Defined by
• Various periods of time in history
• A societys traditions
• The special circumstances of the moment
• Personal opinion
• Meaning given to ethics are relative to time,
  place, circumstance, and the person involved

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Reasons for Ethical Business Behaviour

• Fulfill public expectations for business
• Prevent harming others
• Improve business relations
• Improve employee productivity
• Reduce penalties
• Protect business from others
• Protect employees from their employers
• Promote personal morality

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Business Ethics Across Organizational Functions

• Accounting ethics honesty, integrity, accuracy
• Marketing ethics (Professional Codes of Conduct
  in Marketing Information Systems from
  American Marketing Association)
• Information systems ethics
• Others

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History of Ethics in Research

• In the past not given attention
• Changed with Nuremberg trial findings
• Nuremberg Code (1948)
• Thalidomide (late 1950s)
• Declaration of Helsinki (1964)
• Tearoom Trade (1960s)
• Milgram (1963)
• Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972)

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Ethics in Research Why?

• To protect rights and welfare of research
  participants
• and
• to protect the wider society or community within
  which the research is being conducted

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Mechanisms of Protection

• Ethical regulations or guidelines
• Law
• Universal principles of human rights

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Ethical Principles

• In research, help to make and to justify
  decisions
• Are abstract and difficult to implement in
  practical situations
• Key phrases
• Voluntary participation
• Informed consent
• Risk of harm
• Confidentiality
• Anonymity

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Human Subjects

• Canada
• Tri-council Policy Statement Ethical Conduct
  for Research Involving Humans
• Medical Research Council of Canada
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
  of Canada (NSERC)
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
  of Canada (SSHRC)
• http//www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/english/policystatemen
  t/policystatement.cfm

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Ethical Principles Guiding Research

• Respect for human dignity
• Respect for free and informed consent
• Respect for vulnerable persons
• Respect for privacy and confidentiality
• Respect for justice and inclusiveness
• Balancing harms and benefits
• Minimizing harm
• Maximizing benefit

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1. Human Dignity

• Cardinal Principle
• Basis of ethical obligations
• Two essential components
• The selection and achievement of morally
  acceptable ends
• The morally acceptable means to those ends
• Protect the multiple and interdependent interests
  of the person (bodily, psychological, cultural
  integrity)

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2. Consent

• Presumption that individuals have capacity and
  right to make free and informed decisions
• In research dialogue, process, rights, duties,
  requirements for free and informed consent by the
  research subject
• Your research cannot proceed without consent
• Consent must be maintained throughout

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3. Vulnerable Persons

• Ethical obligations towards vulnerable persons
• Diminished competence
• Diminished decision-making capacity
• Entitled to special protection, special
  procedures to protect their interests
• Entitlement (based on grounds of human dignity,
  caring, solidarity, fairness) to special
  protection against abuse, exploitation,
  discrimination

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4. Privacy Confidentiality

• Fundamental to human dignity
• Standards protect the access, control,
  dissemination of personal information
• Helps to protect mental, psychological integrity
• 9-11

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5. Harms and Benefits

• Balance critical to ethics of human research
• Foreseeable harms should not outweigh anticipated
  benefits
• Harms-benefits analysis affects welfare and
  rights of subjects

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6. Justice and Inclusiveness

• i.e., fairness and equity
• Procedural justice
• Application process
• Distributive justice
• Harms and benefits

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7. Non-malfeasance

• Duty to avoid, prevent or minimize harm
• No unnecessary risk of harm
• Participation must be essential to achieving
  scientifically and societally important aims that
  cannot be realized without the participation of
  human subjects
• Minimizing harm requires smallest number of human
  subjects that will ensure valid data

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8. Beneficence

• The duty to benefit others
• The duty to maximize net benefits
• Produce benefits for subjects themselves, other
  individuals
• Produce benefits for society as a whole and for
  the advancement of knowledge (usually the primary
  benefit)

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Qualitative vs Quantitative Data

• Quantitative
• Logic rests on generalizability
  representativeness
• Sample size is criterion for judging rigour
• Respondents can refuse to answer questions
• Qualitative approaches
• Designed to best reflect experiences
• Therefore most qualitative research less formally
  structured
• Logic rests on notice of saturation the point
  at which no new insights are likely to be
  obtained
• Saturation guides sample size

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Qualitative Issues

• More invasive therefore ethical issues more
  subtle
• Tendency to investigate more completely
• Reliance on observations, interviews, stealthy
  methods can lull subjects
• Easy to violate confidentiality and trust
• Power and status differentials

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Confidentiality Anonymity

• Quantitative Techniques
• Can be easier
• Anonymity of the firm sometimes impossible
• Pseudonyms common but do not eliminate problem

• Qualitative Techniques
• Smaller sample sizes
• Informed consent more critical
• Problems with data presentation/ publication

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Obligations of the Researcher

• Follow code of ethics
• Objectivity
• No misrepresentation
• Preserve anonymity and confidentiality
• Competing research proposals

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Rights Obligations of Subject

• Right to informed consent
• Obligation to be truthful
• Right to privacy
• Right to confidentiality
• Right to no harm
• Right to be informed

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Rights Obligations of Client (User)

• Ethical conduct between buyer and seller
• Obligation to reduce bias
• Do not mis-represent data
• Privacy
• Commitment to research
• Pseudo-pilot studies
• Advocacy

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Language

• The language you use is very, very important.
  What may be clear to you may not be clear to the
  reader. The reader, who is your prospective
  participant, is in a different world than you
  dont expect the reader to read your mind, to
  know your intentions.

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Cases
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Questions?